At the darkest point on the longest night, they chose him. Gabriel felt no lamentations nor regrets for his sacrifice. On the contrary, he volunteered. It was an honour to be relieved of life in order to please the deities of the past. He would learn what all longed to discover and none lived to share; the secrets of what lay in the forest. These were the secrets of the Old Gods, the keepers of knowledge greater than they could ever hold. To enter it would mean to be taken into their graces, sacrificing their earthly form to live amongst them, as all who have entered were known never to return.
He left for the holy site alone, eyes bleary from the depleting sickness that enveloped his kind. His lungs ached, as all of the elderly did. The land was unforgiving; for the Old Gods to tame it and to create such wondrous structures was an accomplishment beyond reckoning. Gabriel took a moment to kneel down and recover what little strength he had. The night was unseasonably warm, and for that he was thankful. Often during the winter solstice the weather was cold enough to nearly break the sacrificed on their journey. To their knowledge, they always succeeded in the end. Otherwise, it was their belief that the sun would only continue to hide, as the Old Gods would no longer deem it fit to roll it across the sky for another year if they were not paid proper homage.
After hours of travel, he knelt in the dirt, desperately needing a moment of rest from the journey. It was there he saw a symbol. A tiny black dot, surrounded by three black rectangles facing outwards, rested on a larger circle of yellow. Their scholars have deemed it the symbol of the Old God's graveyard, where they finally went to rest after conquering this world. The rectangles were believed to be their graves, and the singular black dot a celestial body in which they left for. Other such grave sites have been found, each taking the lives of those that entered. Upon seeing the symbol, Gabriel's resolve was reinvigorated. He was among the few, the lucky, that were given the gift of being allowed to enter their realm! He pushed himself up, old bones fragile and weak, but providing him one final push towards the end of his life and the start of his next.
He crossed the opening in the fence left behind by the Old Gods, the same smooth, cold-to-the-touch texture they had learned to associate with them. He was there, certainly, but it did not look as he had imagined it. The 'forest' was not full of life-giving trees or shrubs, but rather collapsed pieces of the Old God material stretching up from the earth in haphazard ways. It lacked the typical symmetry and order he'd known to associate with them.
Gabriel ventured further. To his left was the body of another sacrifice, collapsed and, strangely, showing very few signs of rot. Why had that body not been taken? Further, why was it facing away from the direction he ventured? Surely, he must have not travelled far enough into the sacred land, and the attempt was not deemed worthy. Gabriel promised himself he would not find the same fate. His lungs ached, and his skin began to burn and itch, in spite of the chill of winter. Still, he was undaunted. Still, he pushed forward.
He arrived at what he felt had to be the central point of the sacred burial grounds of the Old Gods. It looked as if a great devastation had occurred here, debris scattered across the landscape in no true pattern or reason. Great waves of heat and energy emanated from a distant place, a massive hole which most of the devastation seemed to have arisen. He prayed he would be taken soon, that his sacrifice was not in vain. There was little more he could take. His lungs burned, and his skin began to blister and bleed.
Looking across the landscape and seeing nothing more than scattered destruction, Gabriel slowly began to realise his greatest worry.
This is all wrong, he thought. This is no sacred land. This is no burial chamber. The fence... the devastation... the strange symbol... it was a warning. He turned to run, to warn the others, to say the sacrifices were all for naught. Gabriel knew he wouldn't make it. His body was old and weak, and the travel here had nearly sapped him of all the life he held left. He fell to one knee, remembering now the body facing away from the centre of the holy site, and understanding. He had tried to warn the others, too. They would both be buried here, rotting in their failure, waiting to serve as a warning to the next unwary soul that dared enter the destructive realm of the Old Gods.
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